Ever since the canvas (also called cotton duck) and stretcher frames were introduced (approximately year 1520), the artist has preferred to paint on stretched canvas. Some of the world's greatest paintings are on canvas. We do not see, for example, the Mona Lisa, painted on wood or plastic. From Leonardo DeVince of the old world to Georgia O'Keefe of the modern world, from famous to not so famous artist all prefer the taut, slightly flexible, well stretched canvas as a painting surface. The painter's canvas has been various sizes of either squares or rectangles. More recently canvas has been stretched over circles or curvilinear frames. All of these types of stretched canvas have a flat back and are hung on wall for display.
Kurtz U.S. Pat. No. 5,517,775 invented a flexible, plastic, edging apparatus. The flexible plastic strip allows the canvas to rise off the wood while stretching so the wooden frame does not imprint a ghost line on the face of the canvas. The plastic ship is mainly for curvilinear shapes. Kurtz has invented a way to keep his invention in place with brackets. When canvas is stretched, using Kurtz invention no matter the size or shape (square, rectangular, or curvilinear) they will all have a flat back and when the painting is complete will be hung on a flat wall or set on a flat table. The canvas is flat.
In my invention, canvas is 360 degrees; canvas is always curving. There is a flat top and bottom, but paint is not applied there for that is where the staples are. This 360 degrees of stretch canvas has to be hung differently. They can not be hung against a flat wall because one could not see the work of art in its entirety and therefore looking awkward.
There has been an invention to help stretch sock material over a circular frame but this invention has nothing to do with stretched canvas. Hahnel U.S. Pat. No. 1,917,935 stretches sock material to a tubular shape with a metal adjustable frame device. And while some of the wording may sound similar to the Full Moon Canvas, the nature of a stretched sock and a work of art on a 360 degree canvas is not the same. Hahnel's invention is for sock fabric to be embroidered by an embroidery machine for the purpose of mass production of embroidered socks. His invention allows the sock to be embroidery on four sides. When finished the sock is removed, collapsed, and new sock material is put on his metal frame. Hahnel's invention is to decorate functional clothing for mass production, not to create the higher expression of art.
Beside mass production there is another major difference between Hahnel's invention and mine. Paintings are constructed out of canvas and wood making them light weight. The artist painting can be easily moved but to remove or separate a canvas from its frame is done only under very unusual circumstances, for example, to repair a damaged painting. The frame and painted canvas are considered one: unlike Hahnel's mass production invention.
This invention, the full moon canvas, is for a creative artist and their one of a kind work of art on canvas. Society enjoys art through galleries, home and the work place. Paintings are hung on the walls. They are put in places easy to view. The major difference of this invention with other oil or acrylic paintings is the Full Moon Canvas is a round or tubular canvas of any height and circumference. The painting or art is on 360 degrees of canvas. Therefore to view the whole painting (it can not be hung on a flat wall) it must either be hung from the ceiling far enough away from the wall so the viewer can walk around the piece, or placed on a surface so the viewer can walk around